HP 95LX

The HP 95LX Palmtop PC, also known as project Jaguar, is Hewlett Packard's first DOS-based pocket computer, or personal digital assistant, introduced in April 1991 in collaboration with Lotus Development Corporation. The abbreviation "LX" stood for "Lotus Expandable". The computer can be seen as successor to a series of larger portable PCs like the HP 110 and HP 110 Plus.

Hardware

HP 95LX has an Intel 8088-clone NEC V20 CPU running at 5.37 MHz with an Intel system on a chip device. It cannot be considered completely PC-compatible because of its quarter-CGA -resolution LCD screen.
The device includes a CR2032 lithium coin cell for memory backup when the two AA main batteries run out. For mass storage, HP 95LX has a single PCMCIA slot which can hold a static RAM card with its own CR2025 back-up coin cell. An RS-232-compatible serial port is provided, as well as an infrared port for printing on compatible models of Hewlett Packard printers.

Display

In character mode, the display shows 16 lines of 40 characters, and has no backlight. While most IBM-compatible PCs work with a hardware code page 437, HP 95LX's text mode font is hard-wired to code page 850 instead. Lotus 1-2-3 internally used the Lotus International Character Set, but characters are translated to code page 850 for display and printing purposes.

Software

The palmtop runs MS-DOS 3.22 and has a customized version of Lotus 1-2-3 Release 2.2 built in. Other software in read-only memory includes a calculator, an appointment calendar, a telecommunications program, and a simple text editor.

Successors

Successor models to HP 95LX include HP 100LX, HP Palmtop FX, HP 200LX, HP 1000CX, and HP OmniGo 700LX.